


talk like an open book

by lightsaroundyourvanity



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, New Year's Eve, Snowed In, weiss brooding about her family a whole lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23387320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightsaroundyourvanity/pseuds/lightsaroundyourvanity
Summary: When Weiss is snowed into her hotel room with handyman Yang Xiao Long, she's expecting the night to be awful. Instead, she finds a friend. Instead, she finds somewhere to fall.
Relationships: Weiss Schnee/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 14
Kudos: 155





	talk like an open book

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nirav](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/gifts).



> months and months ago, nirav said to me "you should write freezerburn," and I said "okay!" and it was the start of a beautiful friendship. thank you for being an inspiration in everything you do <3

Under the trees, under a roof, under a blanket of thick snowfall, Weiss stands in the middle of the room in her four-thousand-dollar-a-night chalet, supremely irritated, her hands on her hips. She’s toiling under hot, stale air that’s at odds with the glinting scenery outside. She is going to be late for dinner, and she is _going_ to make somebody pay for it all. If her brain doesn’t overcook first. Weiss peels off her blue cashmere bolero and unceremoniously drops it onto one of the overstuffed armchairs that’s clustered around the (dead, blessedly _cold_ ) fireplace. One final plea against the rising, sweltering temperature of her room. Her hair – so carefully arranged in cascading ringlets earlier that afternoon – has long since been swept up into a high, sloppy ponytail that lists to one side. Despite the effort, Weiss can still feel a line of sweat curl its way down the back of her neck, and she shivers. She’s tempted to run outside into the snow just to feel the blessed bite of cold, the fat icy snowflakes landing on her face. Weiss’s fingertips twitch, like she’s reaching for the doorknob, like she’s ready to bolt into the snow and run and run and run, until her round footprints fill in and her lungs start to sear.

_If only,_ Weiss thinks wistfully. _If only._ Since she’d only be even _more_ behind schedule if she went romping into the night, Weiss follows her bolero and sits down on the armchair. Her hands twist restlessly together in her lap.

It’s not that she _wants_ to go to a stuffy New Year’s Eve dinner with her family and two dozen of her father’s closest business associates, but she’s _duty bound_ – and that’s almost the same thing, isn’t it? That’s what her father would tell her, anyway. Weiss can almost hear his voice echoing in the back of her head – _Want and duty are two sides of the same coin, my dear. What you must remember is that I am the man who owns the coin._ Once again, Weiss shivers.

It’s out of Weiss’s hands that the heat in her room has broken. It’s _certainly_ out of her hands that the concierge insisted that maintenance wouldn’t be able to come by unless Weiss was there to let them in. So why does guilt still gnaw at her? Because to Jacques Schnee, it was all irrelevant. The only hands that mattered to Weiss’s father were his own, holding an empire in the palm and making those who crossed him flinch. No, it’s not guilt that gnaws at Weiss. It’s dread.

Weiss finds herself edging towards her phone, even though she’d already texted to say that she would be late and received a yawning nonresponse that did nothing to assuage her mood. It was somehow even worse than a terse reply, and with nothing to react against, with nothing to do but wait for this fabled maintenance worker, Weiss had nothing left to do but drift from edgy to restless to cranky.

This is the state she finds herself when there is finally a knock on the door.

Weiss snaps to her feet, marches to the door, and yanks it open with a sharp twist. “I’ve been waiting for nearly an hour,” she says, icily and before bothering to take the new person in.

“Woah, sorry, Princess. I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s snowing out there.”

Weiss scowls up, and up, and up, and – this what not what she had expected. The handyman is an amazon of a woman with a glorious mane of blonde curls that are loose and catching snowflakes. Her drawl had been so casual it bordered on careless, but when Weiss catches her expression, wide purple eyes, open and without guile, it cuts some of the barbs from her tone.

This is what makes Weiss’s blood boil.

Does this – this _blonde hooligan_ even care that she’s made Weiss wait? Does she even care about _pretending_ that she cares? Weiss is late, Weiss is pissed, and Weiss is trying to ignore the uncomfortable sheen of sweat on her skin, and the person who is supposed to be making her stay more comfortable doesn’t even _care_?! Weiss looks down her nose at the other woman (no easy feat when she’s got ten inches on Weiss), draws just short of jabbing her in the chest with an imperious index finger. “Listen, Miss—” there’s a name, embroidered onto the faded brown corduroy of her jacket, “—Miss _Xiao Long,_ I don’t know who you think you are, but—"

“Please, call me Yang. Miss Xiao Long is my father.” Yang grins, oblivious to her interruption, to Weiss’s spluttering indignance, and sidles past her into the room. “Damn. Did anyone tell you it’s kind of hot in here?”

The door clicks shut behind Yang. Weiss clenches her teeth against a scream of frustration. “Yes,” she says in a clipped tone. “That’s why I _called_ you. Almost an hour ago.”

“Riiiight.” Yang spins on her heel and faces Weiss again. In one hand, she holds a toolbox, which she sets down on top of Weiss’s cashmere bolero. She shrugs her coat off and throws it over her toolbox and stretches, lifting the mass of her hair off of her neck as she does. And Weiss is supremely annoyed, but she’s not _blind._ Underneath the jacket Yang wears plain coveralls, half fastened, the sleeves tied around her waist, and a ribbed white singlet. When she raises her arms, they ripple with well defined muscle. Weiss tries not to stare, but Yang catches her eye, and the corner of her mouth cocks into a smirk.

Weiss’s gaze drops quickly to the ground. Embarrassment burns through her and alchemizes quickly into brighter irritation. She lets out an impatient sigh.

“Like I said,” Yang says, letting the moment fall away. “It’s snowing pretty hard. Lots of problems out here. This was the fastest I could get here.”

“For what I’m paying, the least I should be able to expect is prompt service,” Weiss retorts, unyielding.

Yang shrugs. “Maybe. But hey, it’s the holidays. What can you do?”

“What can _you_ do?”

“Whistle.” Yang grins. “Kidding. Sorry. Sort of. Uh, give me a minute, and I’ll take a look.”

Under her breath, Weiss grumbles that she’s given plenty minutes to waiting, but Yang cheerfully ignores her, fans herself, looks around.

“You’ve been staying here awhile, haven’t you? The place doesn’t look so lived in.”

“How do _you_ know how long I’ve been here?” Weiss asks suspiciously.

“Just making conversation,” says Yang. “You get to recognize the guests that stick around. And you...” she levels Weiss with that bright violet gaze, “You stand out.” A beat, as this filters through Weiss’s skin, and then— “Anyway, I think you’ve talked to my sister a few times. Redhead? Full of springs?” 

“Oh, _her._ ” A sour moue twists Weiss’s mouth. “She’s always running up and down the halls. Ruby, right? Does she work here, too?”

“Nah. But she likes to come visit me.”

“If she isn’t a guest and she isn’t staff then she shouldn’t be around making a _nuisance_ of herself,” Weiss says sharply. “Doesn’t she have her own home to go to? Her own friends?”

Weiss barely knows Yang, barely knows what buttons she has to press – but from the sudden hunch of her shoulders, Weiss is sure she’s punched all of them at once.

“What’s _your_ problem?” asks Yang. “What, you’re too good to make small talk with the locals or something?”

“I pay handsomely for the privilege of not having to,” Weiss retorts.

Yang’s eyes narrow. Her irises ring in angry crimson, and when she whips her head away from Weiss, Weiss swears she can see the ends of her hair crackle like live wires.

“Noted,” Yang says shortly. All the good nature has leached out of her tone. “I’ll get the heat sorted out and be on my way. _Miss_ Schnee.”

This is what Weiss has wanted the whole time – contrition, quick service. So why does she feel herself deflating right now? Why is there the vermillion tinge of guilt coating her thoughts?

Yang moves noisily, banging her toolbox around, clanging it loudly when she opens it and rummages for the right tool. In every angry turn, Weiss can hear her saying _Miss_ Schnee in grating metallic staccato. _Miss_ Schnee.

It finally hits Weiss like a punch to the gut. Lording her financial status over Yang, the disparity in their power – it landed wrong. It landed ugly. It made her sound, Weiss realizes, exactly like her father, and that realization makes her nauseous, if no sweeter. She briefly flirts with _apologizing,_ but the emotional firewall Yang has put up is daunting, excessively daunting.

Instead, Weiss grows frustrated, and she stews. She taps her foot. She crosses her arms over her chest. When Yang straightens up and grunts “All done,” Weiss feels her chest expand in relief. And in twining harmony to this; the whir of the fan, the breath of cool air that ripples over Weiss’s skin in a sheet and coaxes the prickle of goosebumps. A shiver runs down Weiss’s spine and she opens her mouth to say – _something._ Something nice. Yang sees it coming too, hesitant curiosity in the quirk of her brow, the last wash of fire and gold bleeding out of her stare. Something almost hangs in the air between them.

It’s shattered by an icy, sudden _crack_ outside, and the _whoosh_ of falling snow. A lot of it.

“What on _earth—”_ Weiss dashes for the window.

Yang is already at the door. She opens it and then immediately slams in shut when a tall drift of snow tries to force its way in.

Weiss tries to peer out the window. She cranes her neck, but all she can see is white, white, white and glitter. “There’s a tree next to the chalet. A big one. Maybe the weight of the snow was too much on a higher bough and it broke?”

“In that case, I suppose we’re lucky neither of us was taken out by a tree branch,” grumbles Yang. “Although given the circumstances, that might be a small mercy.”

Weiss props her hand on her hip. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Princess.” Yang gestures to the door, the windows, the darkening room. “Take the hint. We’re snowed in.”

Weiss feels her heart sink. Her first thought isn’t the potential danger of more looming snowfall, or of the stranger she is about to be trapped in a chalet suite with for who-even-knows how long – but of her father, tut tutting her and staring daggers when she apologizes for missing the company dinner.

When Weiss takes out her phone, hands fluttering with nerves, it’s her father’s number that she taps in first. It rings, rings, rings, but there’s never an answer. Weiss sends a quick text ( _emergency delay at the lodge – very sorry_!) and draws her attention back to Yang across the way, holding her own phone to her ear.

“Tomorrow _morning_?” she yelps. “But that’s – yeah, I know we’re a skeleton crew tonight. Yeah, I know the bare bones of this stuff is _me._ But what am I supposed to do? Sheesh, it’s New Year’s Eve! I was supposed to go see the fireworks with Ruby.”

Yang hangs up and looks distraught. Weiss feels her heart sink a little further. They all have their own lives, the heiresses and the Xiao Longs, but Yang’s first impulse was to reach out for help. Weiss’s was to scramble for forgiveness.

(A small moment, perhaps, but it changes something in Weiss.)

“Are we... stuck here?” Weiss asks carefully.

“Looks like.” Yang still sounds disgusted, her eyes trained on her phone. “For the night at least.” Her grip tightens on her phone, and Weiss briefly wonders if she’s going to throw it. Instead, Yang only heaves a long, angry sigh. “This _sucks._ ”

It startles the tiniest giggle out of Weiss. “Understatement of the year,” she says dryly.

“And we have the whole year to compare against!” Yang adds, bouncing back despite herself. She looks up and meets Weiss’s eyes again for one bright second – before her phone rings.

“Shit,” Yang says, looking down at her phone. “That’s my sister. I gotta take this.”

No more explanation, no apologies. Yang answers the line and steps away, and Weiss toys with her abandoned lines of communication and turns inward. She still hasn’t heard anything from her father. It gnaws at Weiss, and she broods.

When Yang returns, she looks lighter. Weiss thinks about how lucky this person is, to so clearly see her family as a balm and not something to steel yourself against. “Everything copacetic?” asks Weiss. She tries to erase the longing in her throat.

“Yeah.” Yang tosses her phone with a one-handed spin and then catches it. That snapping tension has fallen out of her. “She’s bummed, but she’s okay, and she knows I’m okay, and that’s what matters, right?”

It’s like a foreign language to Weiss, something carved into old quartz and forgotten.

“Anyway. You got anyone you need to call? Anybody texting you?”

Weiss stiffens. Yang strikes the nerve in total innocence, but like hitting your knee on the coffee table, that doesn’t dull the sharp edge of it, which is why Weiss sniffs and tilts haughtiness up into her chin. “My service must be out because of the storm,” she says coolly, holding her phone on the flat palm of one hand. “I haven’t been getting any—”

Weiss’s phone chooses that moment to light up with a notification. It’s a routine push from Costar ( _It’s easy to admit that all things break today. Leap before you look!),_ and Weiss sees it, sees Yang clock it, sees the pity dawn on Yang’s open face, and winces.

“It must be going in and out,” Weiss says weakly.

“I’m sure it is,” Yang replies. She looks away, a kindness that doesn’t make Weiss feel any better.

“Look, my family are busy people,” Weiss snaps. “They don’t have time to be calling me every three minutes. They have _lives._ I _respect_ that.”

“I’m...” Yang looks straight at Weiss briefly, and there’s that damn pity again. “I’m sure they do.”

“And I don’t appreciate strangers like you judging me.”

“Hey, who’s judging?” Yang holds up her hands in easy surrender. “I’m not saying anything.”

Weiss opens her mouth, a crisp retort ready to topple out like a hard-cut gem, but Yang keeps talking.

“I’m not saying anything – but it sounds like _you_ might need to. I know I’m just... just some stranger, but maybe it would feel good to talk to somebody. And since we’re not going anywhere... maybe that somebody could be me.”

Weiss gapes, speechless and oddly touched. “But I’ve seen such a bitch to you!” she blurts.

“Yeah.” Yang shrugs. “But sometimes being a bitch is how people act sad.” Yang crosses the room and flops onto the loveseat opposite the armchair. “So? What’s wrong, Miss Schnee?”

Something about the easy way Yang owns the space untethers something in Weiss. Something about the way Yang offers, like its easy, like opening up isn’t some dangerous, unbroachable pass makes Weiss’s nerves cling less tightly to her skin. She is, in a word: Disarmed. Weiss sinks to the floor, and she doesn’t know whether she wants to laugh or wants to cry.

Yang, watching this play out across Weiss’s features, looks alarmed. “Are you... going to be okay?”

Weiss takes a breath. “Weiss,” she says finally. “Just call me Weiss.”

Yang looks relieved, and then hesitant, and then she slides off the chair and onto the floor, and crawls to Weiss’s side. “Weiss,” she says slowly, like she’s tasting the name. “You wanna talk about it?”

“I...” Nobody has ever asked Weiss if she wants to talk. She’s not even sure if she knows how to. “I don’t know,” she admits weakly. “I’m... worried, I guess. There’s a dinner I’m supposed to attend tonight, and my father will be... _upset_ if I don’t make an appearance.”

“Aw, come on. He’ll have to understand! I’m sure he’ll just be relieved that his kid survived an _avalanche_.”

Weiss raises an eyebrow. “I’d hardly call that an avalanche.”

“Sure, sure. Makes for a better story though, don’t you think?” Yang winks at Weiss, bold and cheerful.

Weiss ducks her head and laughs. She can feel herself starting to blush again. What is it about Yang that sets her so off balance, sparks her temper or makes her topple or pries loose the hinges of her heart? Persistence, potentially. Charm, absolutely. And something... something impossibly _good,_ that Weiss can’t quite name, but she can see, light and spilling out of Yang like honey.

“It still wouldn’t be good enough,” Weiss grumbles, half to herself.

“He’s your dad,” Yang insists. “I’m sure he’s worried about you.”

“My father... is not always the nicest man.” Weiss feels anxious just saying that, like trouble can frost the air on it. It certainly frosts her tone, the clip of it when she turns on Yang and says, “You wouldn’t understand. You obviously grew up in a black-and-white era sitcom.”

“You think I don’t know what it’s like to have a hard time because I have a cute kid sister?” Yang looks angry again, angry about something that’s always been under the surface, always all this time, but that Weiss hasn’t bothered to chip to the truth of. And why should she have? They dance on eggshells with each other, and then they dance on knives. To punctuate, Yang looks away, the flame of her flickering. “You have no idea what my life has been,” Yang mutters, and Weiss sees herself in it and is startled; that same old bitterness, those same walls.

Weiss isn’t sure how long they sit with this. Long enough for her to turn the thought over in her mind, admire the new light that refracts from its facets. Long enough to feel the tides change.

“I’m sorry,” Weiss says finally. Her voice sounds small in her ears. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about your loneliness. I only have my own.”

Yang looks at Weiss sidelong; thoughtfully, considering. “My mom wasn’t so great either,” she admits at last. “My birth mom, anyway. It’s a long story.”

Weiss can tell that this is true: There are echoes and pages and stories in the cadence of Yang’s words. An offering, a bridge, an admission – Weiss can feel an unfamiliar spell weave around them both, cast with words of vulnerability. The last wisps of helium waft out from her ego.

“Do _you_ want to talk about it?” Weiss asks.

Yang looks surprised. Her face softens. She almost smiles. “Nah. Not tonight.” She leans back. A golden curl of hair snakes over her bare shoulder, and Weiss watches it trail down her arm. It looks soft.

“Me neither,” Weiss admits. “Not tonight.”

There are words, and then there are the things you say without words, the things you read between the lines. Like: How _not tonight_ means _maybe tomorrow_ means _there is something here that neither of us will say aloud, not yet._ Means... something, or at least it does to Weiss. She sits with the possibility, weighs it out, the absurdist _someday_ where she meets a hotel maintenance worker for coffee after they shared an instant of companionable silence while trapped in her suite together.

She finds that she likes the way it hangs.

Weiss finds that she likes the way that Yang hangs next to her, and she’s waiting for the moment that this annoys her – but the moment never comes. Being with Yang, present and on the floor, has knocked the wind out of Weiss’s sails. 

“What time is it?” asks Weiss, and her voice sounds far away.

“Uh.” Yang consults her phone. “Half past eleven.”

“Huh.” Still no word from Weiss’s father. “We’re closing in on midnight now.”

“Yep.” Yang glances towards the window, even though what’s mostly visible now is a sheet of clean snow. But there’s a narrow slice of sky still above it, the tiniest glint of stars through the snowflakes. Yang turns towards Weiss and grins. Hair falling in her face, snowlight bouncing off the curls. “Think we’ll be able to see the fireworks from here?”

Weiss just raises her eyebrows, which makes Yang tip back her head and laugh. It’s infectious; soon Weiss is giggling too, even though it wasn’t much of a joke.

“That’s what I figured,” Yang says mournfully. “What a night to be trapped indoors.”

“At least we have each other,” Weiss says dryly.

Of course, both of them are realizing by now that maybe that isn’t the worst thing in the world. Of course, neither of them are ready to know what to do with the information.

“We’ve got more than that!” Yang says quickly, thumb skating over the glass of her phone to unlock it. “I bet Instagram is popping off. Let’s see what the rest of the world is up to.”

“Really?” Weiss wrinkles her nose. “That’s your offer? Watch you watch your friends’ Instagram stories?”

“Yeah!” Yang grins. “It’ll be fun. I’ll tell you stories. It’ll be like we’re sailing through a party.”

It won’t, and it isn’t, but it conjures the image of Weiss being Yang’s date at a party, some smoky townie bar, Yang’s arm slung around Weiss’s shoulders as she wheels her around the room. It’s nice – nice enough to send Weiss edging closer to Yang, leaning over Yang’s shoulder to peer down at her phone. Yang watches her, head tilted, and smirks. Weiss follows the tug of her lips with her eyes.

Yang hits play, and there’s a tiny, excited shriek and a first-person video of someone rocketing down a hill.

“What on—”

Yang snorts. “That’s my friend Nora. She’s always up to crazy crap like this. I bet we can see the other half of this if we hit...” Yang presses play on another story. The same moment, captured in third person, a redhead in a pink skirt as she races down a hill in a shopping cart, whooping all the way down. “Yup. Her boyfriend Ren. He lives to witness her shenanigans.”

“He’s going to witness her breaking her neck,” Weiss replies.

“Nora? Nah. No way. She’s basically indestructible. You could tip that girl into a volcano.”

“Sounds... fun.” Weiss sounds tentative, even flat, but the truth is, she’s smothering envy. She wants to tip herself into volcanoes, sprint recklessly, run free.

If Yang notices, she says nothing. “Oh, awesome!” she says instead. “Ruby posted something!” Yang taps the icon.

Weiss crowds in closer, genuinely interested to see a familiar face in action. Ruby is exactly as Weiss remembers her, bouncy and wearing an oversized red sweatshirt. She’s laughing, arm held straight in the air, a roman candle shooting off in her hand. Whoever is taking the video starts to cheer, and the camera shakes. “Penny, hold it straight!” Ruby says right before the video cuts out. It’s followed by a blurry selfie of Ruby and a freckled girl wearing green.

“Is everyone you know trying to get themselves killed tonight?” asks Weiss.

“The fun ones, anyway!” Yang says brightly. She nudges Weiss in the side with her elbow. “Come on. Let’s look at yours.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh _please_? I want to see a rich kid’s feed. I bet it’s all champagne towers and movie stars.”

Weiss scowls. “All that stuff is fake, anyway.”

“Of course it’s all fake.” Yang shrugs. “It’s still fun to look at.”

Weiss sighs, relents, and opens her phone. There’s a string of stories at the top of her feed, and she recognizes none of it. Weiss hasn’t curated her own social media in years; the Schnee family has a representative who handles all of that for them. Finally, she finds one she actually cares about and hits to play. It’s a simple boomerang of two champagne glasses clinking together in front of a roaring fire, but it fills Weiss with a warm, impossible fondness.

“Basic,” Yang groans. “What else you got?”

But Weiss is only itching to play the boomerang again, so she does. “That’s my older sister,” she tells Yang. “And her wife.”

“She’s not at the big family dinner?” asks Yang.

“She wasn’t invited. Winter and my father don’t exactly see eye to eye on many things.” Weiss sighs, wistful.

“You miss her.”

“Yes. She was the only one who ever really...” Weiss’s throat chokes on the words. She shakes her head. “Sometimes it felt like she was the only person in my family who really cared. But she left everything last year, even her inheritance, to be with her wife Robyn. Father didn’t approve. I haven’t had much of a chance to see her since then.”

“Okay, I raise my basic to bitchin’,” says Yang. “She sounds awesome.”

Weiss smiles, thinking about how her rigid, austere, ill-tempered sister would react to being called awesome, let alone _bitchin’._ “Yeah,” she agrees. “She is. I wish I could be as brave as her.”

“I’m sure you have it in you.”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Weiss’s chin sets stubbornly. “The Schnee name didn’t begin with my father, and I won’t let him be the end of it. If I were to leave...” Weiss shrugs helplessly. “I still have a legacy to uphold.”

“That sounds like an awful lot of pressure,” Yang says dubiously.

“Maybe. But it’s mine to bear.”

Yang doesn’t say anything right away. Weiss can’t help but wonder what she is thinking. Weiss can’t help but feel herself start to squirm. She’s about to say something just to fill the space in the air when Yang begins to speak.

“After my mom, my real mom, died, I had pull my family back together,” Yang says slowly. “My dad was a wreck. My birth mother left when I was still a baby and after Summer died...” Yang takes a breath. “I thought that was _my_ burden to bear. But I was just a little kid. It was way too much to ask.”

“I’m not a little kid,” Weiss replies.

“I know. But an entire family’s legacy? That’s too much at any age. Don’t get me wrong, it’s noble or whatever. But it seems like... an awful lot.”

Weiss isn’t sure what to say to this. Because Yang is right, she’s _right,_ it is too much, and sometimes it makes Weiss feel so lonely she could cry. Saving a family name that doesn’t even want to be saved – it can feel like tilting at windmills, a tale told by an idiot. But it is important to Weiss all the same, that her father, who wasn’t even born a Schnee, not be the architect of its cloudy future. Weiss admires Winter, respects her, misses her fiercely – but she’s not her sister. She can’t renounce where she comes from so easily. Not when she can stay, when she can wait and gather the tools to fight back one day.

Yang watches Weiss, watches her resolve, and quietly, a stubborn part of her understands: What it’s like to not be able to back down, not for anything, what it’s like to have pride and defiance written indelibly into your genetic code. It’s still too much, Yang wants to say, and it’s rotten sounding work – but maybe it’s not to Weiss.

“I can take care of everything myself,” says Weiss.

“But you shouldn’t have to,” Yang says softly. “Nobody should.”

They hang on these words, flowers pressed between thin sheets of glass. Weiss thinks that Yang is a flurry of impressions and contradictions. To be brave, to be soft, to be strong, to be yielding. To plunge into the unknown but ask the girl beside you to take your hand.

Yang is asking Weiss to take her hand.

Weiss looks at the floor, and then up at Yang through her eyelashes. The air is changing between them, and they can both feel it, are both coasting on its tailwinds. Yang reaches out first, calloused fingertips brushing the underside of Weiss’s chin, and tilts Weiss’s head up until they’re looking directly into each other’s eyes.

“What time is it?” Weiss asks again, faintly.

“Five minutes to midnight,” Yang says, though she never looks away.

“Oh...” Weiss is mesmerized, hypnotized, getting lost in girlish thoughts.

“What is it?”

“I just realized...” Weiss bites her lip, and it splits Yang’s attention for a fraction of a second. “I just realized I won’t have anyone to kiss at midnight.”

A slow, slow smile spreads across Yang’s face. Her hand shifts until she’s cupping Weiss’s cheek. Her thumb brushes back a loose strand of Weiss’s hair. Weiss’s eyes shudder closed, and she waits.

But Yang doesn’t lean forward, only breathes, very softly; “I’ll kiss you at midnight.”

“Really.” Weiss still has her eyes closed.

“I’ll kiss you whenever you want.”

_“Really._ ” If she opens them, she’s sure she’ll be dizzy.

“Just say the word, Princess.”

The tension holds, and holds, and holds – and Weiss is the first to break. She leans in, presses her mouth to Yang’s, finds Yang’s lips are already waiting. They leapfrog gentle, land on passionate, both of Yang’s hands rising to cup Weiss’s face, Weiss clutching fistfuls of Yang’s hair and dragging her closer. 

Truthfully, Weiss has been thinking about doing this from the minute that Yang entered the room, whether she’s ready to admit this or not. She’s been dying to know what it feels like to be gathered into Yang’s arms, to know what Yang’s lower lip tastes like when she gently bites down, to know what noises Yang might make in the back of her throat when their kissing deepens (soft ones, strangled ones, tiny moans that make Weiss feel weak and desperate). And now that Weiss _has_ , all she wants to do is continue to explore. Desire twines through her as they fall back together, legs tangling, hands straying to skim over curves and underneath hemlines.

When the clock strikes midnight, both of their phones light up, abandoned on the floor. There’s a shower of confetti raining down on Yang’s screen as a flurry of texts appear. Weiss’s chimes with a single note.

Both are ignored by Weiss and Yang, shedding clothing like ancient silk masks, tipping themselves into bed from the floor.

\--

Weiss falls asleep with her arm flung around Yang’s waist. Yang’s hair piled over one shoulder in a cascade, Weiss’s curves molding to the bends in Yang’s spine. Yang runs hot, and Weiss burrows her face into the back of Yang’s neck, sleepily feels herself drifting, drifting away.

When she wakes up, buttery sunlight pools through the windows, Weiss’s arms are empty, and Yang is already gone.

Weiss feels the pit of her stomach drop. She rolls out of bed, winds a sheet around her body, pads towards the door, opens it a crack and peers outside. The walk has been shovelled, the path has been cleared, and it’s empty. Weiss feels bleary, she feels bewildered, and she feels the first simmering drops of anger.

_This_ is what Weiss gets for opening up? _This_ is what she gets for allowing herself to be known? Weiss closes the door again, hard enough to shake extra snow loose, an echo of the falling snow that pinned her heart like a bug on a playing card the night before. Weiss feels like an idiot. A vivid, pearl of a moment for Weiss; a way to pass the time for Yang. Weiss feels like a fool. The bright thread of humiliation is like a tributary to the rushing stream of Weiss’s anger. Yang may have left her feeling stupid, but Yang is going to pay. Yang will wish she’d never been born when Weiss is through with her. She’ll—

Weiss’s phone _pings,_ jolting Weiss out of her angry spiral. When she checks it, there’s a notification from Instagram.

**_yangXL_ ** _started following you._

Weiss feels her anger slink back, shamefaced. Curiously she opens Instagram, finds two new messages waiting, and opens them up.

**yangXL**

hey. sorry if I spooked you by leaving. maintenance showed up at the ass crack of dawn. you sleep like you’re dead!!!

**yangXL**

it was actually really cute.

Weiss feels the rest of it ebb out of her, feels her mouth melt into a goofy smile, but she forces a contrite reply.

**weisscube**

A little warning still would have been nice. 

**yangXL**

like. the. dead.

Another breath, and then Yang sends a photo. It’s Weiss, dead asleep, every blanket piled over her, limbs akimbo, mouth open in what has to be a snore. Her hair is a mess, half splayed across the pillows, half in her face, and Weiss combs her fingers through her hair now, like she can retroactively repair the damage, winces when she snags on an impossible tangle right away.

**weisscube**

Delete that IMMEDIATELY.

**yangXL**

but I was going to make a scrapbook.

Weiss frowns. She sees Yang is typing again.

**yangXL**

fine. but it will take more than that to erase the memory.... ;)

Weiss grips her phone a little tighter, feels her face grow warmer. She’ll wear the memory of Yang on her skin for days. She wonders if she’ll ever see Yang again. She knows that she’d like to – but isn’t this is where she’s supposed to play it cool? Weiss is already tired of playing it cool. She decides to take some old advice, and leaps before she looks.

**weisscube**

Maybe we could make some new memories instead.

Weiss holds her breath. She’s often forward, but she rarely cares. She learns that this makes all the difference, her heart in her throat and her phone in her hands. Yang’s reply takes a century to come through.

**yangXL**

...

**yangXL**

...

**yangXL**

...

**yangXL**

u free tomorrow?

Weiss’s breath nearly rushes out in a cheer. She replies without waiting, without thinking ( _yes!_ ) and feels herself starting to float. Weiss asked a girl out on a date and she _won._ Weiss has a date with a girl her father is absolutely going to _hate_ , and it hasn’t occurred to her to worry at all, only to pump her fist and twirl.

Weiss’s phone chimes again, and she checks it. A regular text, sent just after midnight. Weiss swipes it open.

**Winter Schnee**

Happy New Year, Weiss.

Weiss smiles. The fork in their paths grows deeper, but the affection will always be there. When she can’t be by her side, Winter will always be in her corner. Weiss thinks of two clinking champagne glasses, and her heart eases. Winter will always be safe.

There’s still nothing from her father, but Weiss doesn’t feel anxious about that anymore. It’s not like Jacques Schnee is somebody she cares about impressing. Weiss will reclaim her legacy, but she won’t trade her own life in the bargain. Not anymore.

Being heiress to a tarnished name, to actions that she is ashamed of, weighs on Weiss in ways she can’t always clarify. Yang punched to the heart of it in one night, in one fell swoop, and that stuns Weiss. Yang took the subtext of Weiss’s spirit and made in text in a single conversation, left Weiss a sun-bleached bone picked clean.

Weiss will go for coffee with Yang tomorrow and feel swallowed by soft laughter and wreathes of steam. Weiss will go to work on Monday and find that her father’s barbs can’t pierce her skin, that they have lost their sting.

Weiss will walk her own path, freshly cleared of snow. After all: It’s a brand new year.


End file.
